Encoding the Olympics assembles a uniquely representative international team of media experts to provide a comprehensive review of the global impact of media and cultural communications associated with the Beijing 2008 Olympics. Commissioned by the IOC, this pioneering comparative study the largest in Olympic Games research provides a ground-breaking, panoramic, cross-cultural perspective on media responses to the leading sports event of the modern world. The representative team that undertook the study includes media commentators and political analysts, sport and media journalists, Sinologists and observers of the Asian Pacific Rim, academics in Olympic Studies and media and communication studies, scholars of the cultural and sociology studies of sport and festival and events managers.

Encoding the Olympics provides a unique, encyclopaedic study that will serve as a versatile resource at several levels as a textbook or source reference for academic institutions, media public relations agencies that facilitate the work of inter-cultural exchange organisations, and international communication departments of multinational enterprises and international NGOs. This volume analyses global media responses to a mega-sport event on a scale never before attempted.

This book was previously published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.

Cinzia Padovani takes an in-depth look at Italian public service broadcasting, covering its history, its role in Italian society, its relationship to the political party system, and its influence on cultural and linguistic unification in Italy. Tracing the history and development of Italian public television broadcaster Radiotelevisione Italiana (RAI) to the present, Padovani challenges traditional views by asserting that parties' 'interference' in RAI has, at times, strengthened the role of public service broadcasting and that partisan journalism has even enhanced democratic potential.

Cinzia Padovani takes an in-depth look at Italian public service broadcasting, covering its history, its role in Italian society, its relationship to the political party system, and its influence on cultural and linguistic unification in Italy. Tracing the history and development of Italian public television broadcaster Radiotelevisione Italiana (RAI) to the present, Padovani challenges traditional views by asserting that parties' "interference" in RAI has, at times, strengthened the role of public service broadcasting and that partisan journalism has even enhanced democratic potential.

Encoding the Olympics assembles a uniquely representative international team of media experts to provide a comprehensive review of the global impact of media and cultural communications associated with the Beijing 2008 Olympics. Commissioned by the IOC, this pioneering comparative study the largest in Olympic Games research provides a ground-breaking, panoramic, cross-cultural perspective on media responses to the leading sports event of the modern world. The representative team that undertook the study includes media commentators and political analysts, sport and media journalists, Sinologists and observers of the Asian Pacific Rim, academics in Olympic Studies and media and communication studies, scholars of the cultural and sociology studies of sport and festival and events managers.

Encoding the Olympics provides a unique, encyclopaedic study that will serve as a versatile resource at several levels as a textbook or source reference for academic institutions, media public relations agencies that facilitate the work of inter-cultural exchange organisations, and international communication departments of multinational enterprises and international NGOs. This volume analyses global media responses to a mega-sport event on a scale never before attempted.

This book was previously published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.